Page 40 - Eyal Segal-Release_Return 2016

Release and Return, Release in Return. \ Interview

Rona Cohen: I would like to begin by referring to the title of your first exhibition “Falling into
place” (2013). I have the impression that in your works there is always something in the image
(for example the container in Time Container, the aquarium in Turgor) which functions like an
entrance to a “rabbit hole”. To experience your art the viewer has to follow you – in falling down
a rabbit hole, in falling in place and into place, in time and in memory. It’s a strange expression
“falling into place” it is like shaking the ground you are standing on so as to explore and disclose
the archeological and historical layers underneath, falling into a memory. Indeed, in one of your
poems you speak of art in terms of opening a new door so as to allow the viewer into another
world, another time, you say that the artist can only show the way, but it is for the viewer to “fall
in place”. Is this how you see art and how you see the role of the artist?

Eyal Segal: Yes, for me a crucial part in my 'job' is to access these doors to other worlds and
explore these parallel layers by finding details, scenes, or time fragments, and magnifying them
for the viewer to experience in a poetic and tangible way. Sometimes, the places are far from
the regular eye and everyday life, like the abandoned silo or a restricted port, but can also be
a common place or a touristy place like Wadi Rum or a promenade full of people. My role is to
be a hunter of these moments that pass by all of us. Simply by placing the image in a frame, I
have presented ‘this door’ to the viewer. In a way, the image is the first key to enter the 'rabbit
hole'. Next, the viewer’s senses must continue the journey, all triggered through sound, spirit,
memory, action, place and time. During the work process – and every time in a different way – I
try to get the viewer to see and to feel these emotions as I had felt while making the video, to
recreate the experience from the inside. The titles of the pieces provide another portal to the
journey, often, through a play on words. The title “Falling into Place” evolved from the common
saying: "everything is falling into place". With the elimination of the first part of the sentence,
the common saying is converted to a more personal level as an invitation to the viewer. The title
provides an open gate into what I felt when I found myself falling into these places.

RC: One of the strongest themes in your art which runs almost like a leitmotiv is man’s
relationship with nature. You know, Jean-François Lyotard spoke of the Kantian sublime in terms
of an aesthetic experience where nature no longer speaks to us through “coded forms”, in other
words we are faced not only with the magnitude and force of nature which exceeds our grasp and
our power of imagination but also with its otherness and strangeness. It seems to me that for you
nature is both intriguing in its otherness but there is also a strong sense of commonality between
man and nature. Even in your latest work “Moon, Mars, Jupiter trilogy” you address an exchange
between humans, a loop where one releases something and – hopefully – something returns
(“Release: Return”) where a circle has been established, in terms of the most fundamental “loop”
in nature. Like in “falling into place” it seems that there is a moment we find ourselves always
already in nature and art is a way of bringing this mode of existence into visibility. What do you
find in this exchange between human and nature?

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